Roland Emmerich

Will Smith returning for an Independence Day sequel seemed like a real no-brainer: director Roland Emmerich’s original film, released in 1996, established Smith as a legitimate blockbuster star and helped earn him the nickname Mr. July. So why didn’t the actor return for Independence Day: Resurgence? Rumors have swirled about scheduling and pay, but Emmerich has the real answer, and it’s kind of…anticlimactic?

Director Roland Emmerich and the stars of the upcoming Independence Day sequel are currently participating in a livestream Q&A, which you can watch in the YouTube player above. One of the details recently revealed: Independence Day 2 is officially called Independence Day: Resurgence, and you can expect a lot more fighter pilot action, apparently.

Independence Day helped define the modern summer blockbuster and earned Will Smith the nickname Mr. July (for a while, anyway). It’s easy to forget that there was a time when summer movies weren’t always superhero flicks and action movies and disasterpieces. And now the man who gave us Independence Day is back again with Independence Day 2, the long-awaited, long-developing sequel which will finally arrive in theaters next summer. We know who’s in it, but what is it about, exactly?

The last time we saw Brent Spiner’s Dr. Brackish Okun, his body was being forcibly used as a psychic transmitter to convey the malicious intentions of the invading aliens in Roland Emmerich’s bombastic, semi-masterpiece Independence Day. And then his weak, human husk was thrown across the room and he died. But now, some new Independence Day 2 casting supposes that ... maybe he didn’t?

When Bill Pullman dumped that big “We will not go quietly into the night!” speech at the end of Independence Day, he really wasn’t kidding. Even though Will Smith will not return, Independence Day 2 is still moving forward, like an enormous alien spaceship slowly approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. Late last night, Roland Emmerich tweeted the latest original Independence Day cast member to join the film:

Roland Emmerich didn’t go far to pick up screenwriters for the reboot of his 1994 film ‘Stargate.’ The director has set the writers of ‘Independence Day 2' to work on the upcoming film, which will reboot the series and kick-off a trilogy of new ‘Stargate’ movies, which will then presumably kick-off another 20 years of ‘Stargate’ spin-off TV shows. ‘Stargate’ forever.

There are some that say Liam Hemsworth is the lesser Hemsworth brother after Chris, who is Thor and The Huntsman and Blackhat. To which I say that’s ridiculous; Luke is obviously the lesser Hemsworth brother. Just kidding Luke, please don’t hurt me. Any Hemsworth is still far better than a Singer. Trust me on this.

Happy Thanksgiving! Okay, enough of that, let’s talk about a far more important holiday, cinematically speaking: Independence Day and ‘Independence Day,’ and specifically let’s talk about the film’s sequel. The follow-up to Roland Emmerich’s 1996 movie about Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Pullman fighting off an alien invasion has been in development at Fox for a while now, and for a long time the plan was to make two ‘ID4’ sequels back to back. At that point, Smith’s participation was a question mark, with the studio supposedly going so far as to write two versions of the script; one with the Fresh Prince and one without him.

We'd recently heard a bit about 'The Matrix' star Keanu Reeves getting in on the TV game with a starring role in Slingshot Global Media's action series 'Rain,' but it seems the erstwhile Neo is taking an even deeper dive into some well-worn territory. Joining Roland Emmerich, Reeves will retreat back into virtual reality to executive produce a new sci-fi series dubbed 'New Angeles.'

Earlier today when the 'Cliffhanger' reboot was announced, we joked that Hollywood was turning to action movies (and seemingly specifically action movies from the nineties) as the new hot property to remake/reboot. Now there's word that 'Stargate' will not only be rebooted by its original creators Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, but the plan is to turn the reboot into a trilogy.